Out From the Cold
by Lena7142
Summary: Time seemed to slow to a tick, just as everything else had slowed, including the beating of Casey's heart.
1. Chapter 1

**Out From The Cold**

Chaos Fic**  
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**A/N:**

So, this is my first Chaos fic. Been a long-time reader of everything in this fandom, and figured I ought to actually participate. I claim no ownership of the characters. (If they were mine, they'd still damn well be on the air...)

Many thanks to the wonderful and talented Faye Dartmouth for being a fantastic Beta!

* * *

><p>The first thing Casey became aware of was the cold.<p>

He was lying on something cold, hard, and fairly smooth. _Metal_, something in the back of his mind noted. The air was cold too, adding a sort of sharpness to every breath.

The second thing Casey became aware of was the headache.

He opened his eyes while suppressing a groan. The side of his head was pounding, and when he reached up to touch the tender spot on the side of his forehead, his fingers came away with the flakey residue of dried blood. As consciousness reasserted itself, fragments of memory began to reassemble themselves, like puzzle pieces.

The mission had gone to hell, as an alarming number of the ODS' missions were wont to do. It wasn't even supposed to be a terribly high-risk operation; just the recruitment of an asset. Intelligence reports in Brazil had identified an underboss in one of the major drug-trafficking gangs in Rio de Janeiro who would be willing to provide intel on the cartels. Most likely, Casey had cynically pointed out during the briefing, as a method of removing the competition. So the four of them had gotten on a flight to Rio, for what was supposed to be a nice, simple, straightforward mission. Only the asset, Olivera, had spooked, and one thing had led to another and it had all broken apart. Olivera, in a bout of paranoia, had refused to meet with the ODS unless they eliminated a member of the same cartel whom he believed to be a security risk. Which had sent the mission on a whole different track, involving, at one point, a rooftop chase through one of the hillside shanty-towns.

Just another day at the office.

Of course, then they'd split up, with Michael and Rick intercepting a cocaine shipment whose route they'd just uncovered (Rick was the only one whose Portuguese was sufficiently good to pull off their swiftly-cobbled cover). Casey and Billy had been dispatched back to Rio to meet with Olivera and bring him proof of their success in exchange for his intel.

Sitting up, Casey massaged his aching head. Only when they'd arrived, Olivera hadn't been there. Well, his body had, but the man himself had shuffled off this mortal coil, as Billy had put it. The asset's boss had gotten wise to the deal, and had been less than amused. Armed goons had surrounded them, and while Billy rushed to smooth-talk them out of an increasingly dire scenario, Casey had tried to identify a battle plan that wouldn't end in him or Billy getting shot. He was having a hard time thinking of anything that would result in a significant casualty –

– and then he'd gotten whacked in the head, and he'd stopped thinking of much of anything at all.

And now he was here. Wherever _here_ was. Blinking in the dim, fluorescent light, Casey took stock his surroundings: small room, maybe ten by twenty feet; walls lined with shelves, covered in boxes and plastic tubs; slightly odd odor, like spoiled food; no windows, no vents, no door. And really damn cold.

A walk-in freezer. _Perfect_.

Turning his head, ignoring the faint dizziness (minor concussion, most likely: not a severe concern), he spotted Billy, unconscious on the floor beside him. For a brief moment Casey felt a tightening in his chest, but a swift cursory examination revealed that the other operative had purely superficial injuries, and would probably wake shortly.

He had reviewed the circumstances that had led to their current position, assessed their current location and condition, and now he had one more thing to identify:

How they were going to get out of here.

Clambering to his feet, Casey went over to the door. There was a point on the wall where some mechanism had been hastily removed and torn out. Probably, he noted with a grimace, the emergency release for the door. He tried the handle anyway, though he knew what to expect.

He and Billy were locked in.

* * *

><p>"Don't bother," Casey drawled bitterly. "It's locked. I've tried it."<p>

Billy shrugged as he yanked on the door handle again, the mechanism giving a rattle but remaining stubbornly in place. "Can't fault a man for trying."

"In the face of obvious futility? Yes, I can. It's _stupid._" Casey was sitting on the floor, knees pulled up to his chest, watching Billy's pointless exertion with a mix of amusement and irritation.

Billy let go of the handle and stuck his hands in his pockets, letting the heavy strips of plastic sheeting that hung over the doorway fall back into place. "I suppose then, that you have a preferable plan in mind?" He raised an eyebrow, leaning back against the wall with a casual pose that belied the severity of the situation. He'd woken up a few minutes after Casey, similarly groggy but apparently no worse for wear, save for a few cuts and bruises and the beginnings of a black eye.

Casey scowled. "We wait."

"What's this? Casey Malick recommending a course of inaction?" Billy's surprise was only partially feigned. "Seems a bit out of character for you, mate."

"We're locked in a freezer. The walls are over half a foot thick. There's no reception in the earwigs, so we have no method of contacting Michael and Martinez, and the thing locks from the outside, so we have no way of getting out unless someone lets us out. The only thing we can do is wait for them to find us."

Silence lingered for a moment in the frigid air, the unpleasant reality of the situation and the unpleasant truth of Casey's words slowly sinking in.

"And how long do you reckon that'll take?" Billy asked after several long seconds.

Casey sighed, his breath a small puff of steam. "We were only out for about ten minutes. We've been out of radio contact for about forty minutes. That means –"

"That means another twenty minutes before they know something's wrong," Billy finished, uncharacteristically somber.

"And then however long it takes for them to find us," Casey added. "And if the regulations here are anything like what the FDA has, then this freezer is between ten and zero degrees."

"Well, that's not so bad."

"Farenheit, Collins."

"… oh. Right."

Silence again. Billy pursed his lips together, looking around the walk-in. Then he smiled faintly. "Well, you were the one complaining about how much you hated the jungle heat."

Casey snorted. "Believe me, the irony isn't lost on me."

It didn't help that they'd dressed for the warmer weather, Casey reflected. If the mission had been in Russia, for instance, they'd already be reasonably bundled up. As it was, he had on a lightweight canvas jacket over a t-shirt and jeans, and Billy wore a simple linen suit. And all of their attire had already been slightly damp with sweat from the oppressive humidity and Brazilian heat. Which meant they'd both be losing body heat, and fast. Casey bit his lip, pressing his mouth into a thin line. Already he could feel his fingers begin to ache from the cold, and he was grateful that he'd at least had the good sense to put on some decent boots, anticipating a potential hike through the rainforest.

"Well then!" Billy interjected, his usual enthusiasm reasserting itself. "Time to get busy!"

"Excuse me?"

Billy pulled a small utility knife out from his pocket (something their captors must have either missed or deemed too inconsequential to confiscate) and began to hack at the plastic curtains. Casey watched, skeptical confusion on his features. "What on earth are you doing?"

Tearing down one of the sheets of plastic, Billy threw it over to Casey. "While it wouldn't surprise me at all if your near-superhuman powers of physical discipline had enabled you to resist the cold, I would nonetheless recommend wrapping yourself up in that."

Casey blinked. "Insulation. Clever."

"If you want to help," Billy continued, tearing down a second sheet, "I'd empty out some of the boxes on the shelves. Puttin' the cardboard down will give us something to sit on that isn't a cold metal floor, and I for one would consider that a preferable alternative to literally freezing my arse off."

Casey wasn't even going to dignify that with a reply. But the galvanized steel floor was cold, and Billy's suggestion had merit. And if nothing else, the movement would keep his blood flowing, keeping him warm. The boxes were mostly of medium size, so he had to empty and break down a number of them before they'd built up enough to make a cardboard nest on the floor. Billy finished cutting down the curtains and lent his knife to Casey's boxcutting efforts, going through the other contents of the freezer in search of any other insulatory materials. He eventually turned up some small plastic bags, and while they weren't big enough to form ponchos out of, as Casey would have hoped, they would make effective – if rather stupid-looking – makeshift mittens and socks.

It all took less than twenty minutes. And then they were hunkered down on the boxes in the corner, leaning up against the shelves with their bodies wrapped in plastic curtains and their hands and feet wrapped in plastic bags.

"This sucks," Casey grumbled, pulling the collar of his jacket up as he tucked his chin down against his chest. He and Billy had sat down back to back, keeping their cores relatively close to one another as a way of sharing warmth.

"Aye, but it could be worse," Billy commented, shifting on the boxes.

"How, exactly?"

"Well. Instead of sticking us in a freezer, they could have just shot us. Quite frankly, considering the large number of munitions that were being pointed at us, I'm rather surprised they didn't."

Casey shook his head, forgetting briefly that their current arrangement meant Billy couldn't see him. "Cleaner this way. You don't leave a mess when you freeze to death, and when a body's frozen solid it becomes much easier to cut into bits without all the gore, making for a more efficient disposal."

"… For the sake of my sanity, I'm not going to dwell on how you know that."

He shrugged. "I worked with a cleaner in Singapore for a brief time. You should see the things I know how to do with industrial lye."

"Ugh, I'll take a pass, mate."

"At any rate, I'd guess we're only alive for now because Olivera's boss wants to make us disappear as tidily as possible," Casey concluded, trying to focus on something other than the way the cold just seemed to be settling into his bones.

"Heh… there for the grace of God and cleanly criminals."

"For now, at any rate." The minute Casey said it he could feel Billy's posture change, and regretted it. Not that it wasn't true, of course, and he didn't really see why Billy would react badly to the truth, but he recognized that for reasons of morale, the observation was perhaps not the most helpful. "We'll be missing the check in right now," he said, hoping to change the topic. "Michael and Rick will know something's up and start looking. That's something." Optimism didn't come naturally, but he was giving it his best shot.

"If we were only out for ten minutes, then we can only be within ten minutes of the meeting point where we were supposed to rendezvous with Olivera. Probably less," Billy added.

"And if we're in a location with a freezer, I'm thinking restaurant. Most of the food in here is past date, so it's probably closed. I'm fairly certain I remember seeing a boarded-up joint on our way in."

"Great! So we know where we are!"

"Only Michael and Rick don't."

"That… would be the problem, aye." Billy slumped a bit. "Well, they're clever enough lads. They'll work it out sooner or later. Though I would certainly appreciate it if it were sooner, given the somewhat inclement climate in here."

"You and me both," Casey mumbled, hugging his knees up to his chest.

* * *

><p>Rationally, Casey knew that the freezer was set at a constant temperature. But it still felt like it was getting colder. The chill was settling deep, and he found himself beginning to shiver a bit. His hands and feet were beginning to ache from the cold, and through the plastic he could see the skin of his fingers turning white and waxy.<p>

Time dragged by, the seconds each an eternity.

"This reminds me a bit of the mission in Bosnia, back in '09," Billy remarked, breaking the lull of silence. They'd been in the pattern of speaking, then falling silent, then resuming a conversation some time later. Neither of them had much to say, but words gave them something to think about other than the cold.

"As I recall, we were in a morgue, not a freezer. And we weren't locked in. Also, men were shooting at us."

"Well, see? No dead bodies and no gunfire! Already our current situation appears rosy by comparison."

Casey knew what Billy was trying to do, but forced optimism was perhaps more tragic than realistic pessimism. He sighed; reflecting back on the gunmen in the morgue in Serajevo only reminded him of the gunmen in their more recent encounter. "I should have seen it coming."

"What, Bosnia?"

"No. The ambush at the meet."

"Casey, I may be wrong, but I'm fairly certain that the entire point of an ambush is that it's something you _don't_ see coming."

Casey shifted uncomfortably. He felt like he was having a bit of a hard time moving – like his limbs were heavier than usual. "I should have, though. I ought to have picked up on the fact that something was wrong off the bat."

"Well, if you're going to claim fault here, you at least ought to share some of the guilt. I walked right in same as you, mate," Billy retorted. "They got the drop on us. It happens. Sometimes you just have an off day."

"Off days in our line of work typically involve a body count," Casey mumbled.

"At any rate, it happened. Olivera's boss set a trap, and we were outnumbered and outgunned. Human weapon or not, fighting them would've been tantamount to suicide, given our strategic disadvantages."

"So instead of dying in the warehouse, we die here?" Casey recognized that he was angry with himself and not Billy, but couldn't help snapping.

Billy shifted. "Michael and Rick'll get here. You'll see."

Casey felt his friend shudder, but attributed it to the cold.

* * *

><p>"I recognize that I ought to commend your resourcefulness."<p>

"Hm?"

"With the plastic and the cardboard. For insulation," Casey iterated.

"Ach, well, not the first time I've been in a chilly situation," Billy replied.

"Oh?" Casey didn't typically prompt his colleague to share (Billy usually did that without prompting, against Casey's express wishes), but he was beginning to feel a bit stressed, and Billy's yarns were more interesting than staring at the shelving.

He felt Billy shrug. "I've had a couple missions in cold places. One time, Her Majesty's Secret Service had me out in Siberia for nigh on a fortnight."

"And you wrapped your hands and feet in trash bags?"

"Nay, that was actually a trick I picked up long 'fore then. I used to go for long walks – 'hikes' as you say across the pond–"

"You don't use the word 'hiking'?" Casey interjected.

"Well, no, we just say walking. Like, 'I went for a walk up the mountain.' But anyway, a mate and I were out for a long walk out on the moors –"

"I hesitate to inquire what 'a long walk' means."

"About a week. We were doing the West Highland Way, out over the Rannoch Moor. We decided to go in the winter season, since it wouldn't be so crowded. Anyhow, part of the trail got washed out from the rains that winter, and we took a detour. Wound up getting bloody well lost, with no gear–"

Casey frowned. "No gear?"

"Weeelll, some of us slightly lazier walkers occasionally use a service that will bus our gear on ahead to the next town on the route so we can meet up with it later. It's a common enough practice. But we never quite made it to the next town before nightfall. And where it's a wee bit of a treacherous path, we weren't too keen on walking it in the dark. So we wound up out on the highland moor, midwinter, with naught but th' clothes on our backs and what little gear we'd brought for the day."

"That was stupid."

"We were eighteen. I'm fairly sure 'stupid' was our default state of being. We had the plastic bags we'd wrapped our lunch in, and used them to keep our hands warm. Dug ourselves into the hillside and covered ourselves in heather. It started t' rain halfway through the night."

Casey shuddered – mostly from the cold. "Sounds miserable."

Billy snorted. "It's not one of my fonder memories of my homeland."

Casey took a moment to rub his hands together, sticking them under his armpits in hopes of restoring some sensation to his extremities. "So what happened?"

"When we didn't reach the check-in point in Crainlarich, a rescue team got sent out to look for us. We got found sometime around sunrise the next morning. Though I daresay they nearly missed us, covered in mud and heather as we were."

The mental image of Billy coated in mud and underbrush prompted a faint smirk on Casey's face. "Glad to know you have a track record of surviving the cold."

"I did live to walk another day," Billy replied rather distantly. "Dinnae do the West Highland Way after that, though…"

* * *

><p>Casey couldn't feel his feet.<p>

He'd started to shiver in earnest, his whole body trembling.

At one point, Billy turned around and looked at him, concern etched on his features. "You doin' all right, mate?"

"I'm fine," Casey growled from between clenched teeth, trying to keep them from chattering.

"You seem like you're about to shiver yourself right apart."

"Shivering is a normal physiological reaction to the cold, Collins," Casey snapped. He rubbed his numb hands against his body's core, not that it was doing much good anymore. "It's when I stop shivering that you should worry," he added beneath his breath.

"… I reckon we might be able t' preserve a bit more body heat if we change positions…"

He grimaced. "No."

"Casey."

"If I'm going to be found as a frozen popsicle of a human being, it's going to damn well be a dignified popsicle."

"You'll be a dead popsicle, you pillock." Billy retorted with uncharacteristic annoyance, though his words were oddly sluggish and slurred, his Scottish brogue thickening. "Now quit bein' daft, aye?"

And with only a minimal amount of protest (because he was too cold and too tired to put up a fight), Casey found himself pressed up against Billy, the plastic sheets wrapped around them both as they curled in around each other.

"This is humiliating," he griped, though the violence of his shivering was already beginning to abate against the warmth of Billy's body.

"But warm," Billy mused, sleepily.

"If word of this ever leaves this goddamn freezer–"

"I won't tell a soul."

"– they'll never find your body," Casey finished, letting his eyes close for just a moment.

* * *

><p>He drifted in and out. It could have been minutes, or hours – he wasn't sure. He was shivering again, and he could feel Billy shaking against him as well. Each breath he breathed was warmth escaping in a visible puff of vapor – warmth he'd never retrieve.<p>

During one of his more wakeful moments, watching those puffs of breath, Casey began to have a troubling thought.

"Billy?"

"Mmmnh?"

"Wake up."

"Whaa-?"

"How big do you think this room is?"

"The – huh?" Billy's eyes fluttered open and struggled to focus. "Tha room?"

"Yeah. How big?" Casey watched as Billy fought against the sluggish effects of the cold.

"I reckon… twenty feet by ten feet by eight feet? Give or take a foot?"

"So, 1,600 cubic feet of air, you'd say?"

Billy blinked again. "If you're thinking 'bout us runnin' out of oxygen, mate, I'd say tha's a secondary concern. We've got at least a half-day's worth of air in here. Not so sure 'bout a half-day's heat…"

Casey's face soured. "Oxygen isn't the gas I'm worried about."

It took a few seconds for recognition to dawn on Billy's features. "Carbon dioxide."

"We exhale 5% CO2 compared to the regular 0.05% in the atmosphere, and an 8% build-up is utterly lethal," Casey elaborated, watching Billy's lips move as he did the math.

"Well… that's not good," Billy murmured as he came to the conclusion Casey had already worked out several minutes ago.

"Dorset and Martinez had better hurry the hell up," he mumbled, trying to curl himself up tighter.

"Agreed."

And with every visible breath, Casey watched them dying…

* * *

><p>It was hard to tell if the disorientation was from the cold, the carbon-dioxide levels, his concussion, or some combination of the three.<p>

Time had become irrelevant. Time was the most important thing in the world. Time seemed to slow to a tick, just as everything else had slowed, including the beating of Casey's heart.

He remembered reading somewhere that all molecular movement came to a halt at absolute zero. What was it again? -459º Farenheit? Something like that. Heat death of the universe and all that. Everything would just get so cold it'd simply –

–stop.

Casey turned and looked over at Billy, though the effort it took to move seemed Herculean. The Scottish operative was shaking with cold, frost forming on his lashes and on the stubble near his mouth. His skin had turned pale and his lips blue, and if not for the shivering and the occasional blink, Casey might have taken him for a corpse.

Billy must have sensed Casey's gaze. He glanced over at him. "H-how long?"

Casey looked down at his watch, then frowned. "Not sure. My watch has stopped." The humidity from the jungle must have gotten some moisture into the mechanism, and now with the cold, that moisture must've frozen, jamming up the delicate cogs and gears.

_Everything got so cold it just stopped._

Including them.

Billy closed his eyes, leaning his head back. "Soon…"

Soon Michael and Rick would be there.

Or soon, Casey and Billy wouldn't be.

Either way.

* * *

><p>Someone was shaking him. But Casey didn't want to wake. His whole body was numb, which he supposed was nice. He didn't feel cold anymore. He didn't feel anything anymore.<p>

He heard Billy's voice, talking to him, but he couldn't make out the words. He could picture his brain, solidifying into a mass of ice, impenetrable.

Casey groaned, or tried to, when he felt someone jostling him. He couldn't move, however, and couldn't seem to operate his mouth to protest. Somehow the signals between his mind and his muscles stalled out. Under most circumstances, this physical unresponsiveness would have driven him to distraction, but he found all annoyance at his body dampened by a sense of profound apathy.

He didn't care. He just wanted to sleep…

Someone was wrapping him in something. And words that may or may not have been an apology touched his frost-bitten ears, but before he could consider the implications, darkness gently pulled him under once more.

* * *

><p>Noise. Why was there noise? And light. So much light. Casey squinted against it, and then wondered how it was that his eyes had come to be open in the first place. Odd. He was normally far more aware and in control of his physiological responses…<p>

Damn.

His head hurt.

"Casey? Casey!"

He blinked. Someone was standing over him, and while there was a sense of familiarity, he couldn't seem to focus. It was… moderately frustrating.

"He's breathing! I think he's awake, but he's not responding!" Rick. That was it. The person was Rick. "Stay with me, Casey, you're gonna be fine, paramedics are on their way…"

"Rick–"

"I can't believe we got here in time–"

"Rick!"

"What?"

Rick. Michael. Rescue. Casey let his eyes slip closed again. Everything was going to be fine. Everything was going –

"–Rick, Billy hasn't got a pulse."

_Billy. No. _Casey tried to open his eyes, tried to sit up. But he couldn't think and he couldn't breathe and everything was reeling around him, his already unfocused vision dimming. He tried to turn his head, but the muscles in his neck seemed immobile, like a rusted hinge. Casting a glance to his side, he made out a pale and lifeless figure. He tried to focus, tried to make out some detail that would hint at life – an eyelid fluttering, or a thin coil of breath steaming in the frigid air. But Billy was utterly still, his lips blue and patterns of frost forming on his skin. And even as Casey tried to concentrate, he found his sight beginning to swim as darkness encroached on his peripheral vision._ Billy…_

His chest hurt and clenched. The pain in his head reached blinding levels. He could hear Rick's voice yelling, heightening in pitch even as it grew fainter and further away, until there was nothing but silence.


	2. Chapter 2

**AN:** Once again, thanks to Faye Dartmouth for beta-ing!

* * *

><p>Casey didn't want to wake.<p>

Waking hurt. Waking meant the return of sensation. And where it had left him gently, the numbness of cold settling in with a minimal amount of dull aching, it returned now with a vengeance, his bloodstream filling with fire. He vaguely remembered crying out at the burning, stabbing pain in his arms, his legs, his hands and feet. And then he slipped under…

…only to resurface again. At first there was a humming in his ears, a tinny noise that expanded in scope and volume until there was a seeming cacophony around him, deafening him with a mix of beeps and thumps and overlapping voices. He still felt the cold deep in his chest, but his abdomen, conversely, felt strangely warm. Opening his eyes and blinking, he looked down.

Well. That was unexpected. And mildly disturbing.

Tubes were running through his stomach, sliding in through incisions on his left and emerging somewhere beneath his ribcage on the right. Clear liquid pumped by some manner of machine traveled through the piping, and it took Casey a second to realize they were pumping warm water _through_ him; it was like some bizarre inverse of a car's cooling system, he reflected idly.

Aside from the tubes through his insides, there were electrodes hooked up to his chest which were in turn hooked up to an EKG, and an IV hanging from a bag of clear liquid he guessed was probably saline solution. Blankets covered him from the waist down, and warm, rolled-up towels cushioned his torso and neck. An oxygen mask pressed against the skin of his face, the edges of the rubber digging into his cheeks and chin, rather uncomfortably.

And beside him, looking more or less asleep and rather worse for wear, was Martinez.

Casey tried to turn his head, but his body resisted the movement, his muscles stiffening. As his consciousness fully reasserted itself, so did the deep and pervasive aching throughout his body. He tried and failed to stifle a grunt of pain, and Martinez jerked awake at the sound, panic settling on his youthful features for the few seconds it took him to recognize that Casey was awake.

"Hey," Casey managed to utter, hoarsely, voice muffled by the oxygen mask.

"Hey," Martinez replied with a shaky smile.

Casey, in turn, frowned. He'd woken up in enough hospitals to recognize one – the beeping of heart monitors tended to be a dead giveaway – and the bandage wrapped around Martinez' head suggested he'd sustained some manner of injury. But when he tried to think back on the events that led to him being here, it was like there was nothing but static. "Where…" he coughed. "You appear to be injured, Martinez. What happened?"

Rick's eyes widened in faint surprise. "You… don't remember?"

"I'd imagine my request to know what happened would have made that implicit."

Rick swallowed. "I, er, got grazed with a bullet, but it's very shallow. Just needed some stitches. I'm more worried about you, to be honest."

Casey frowned again. "I reiterate my previous question: what happened?"

He almost felt pity for Rick, the way the younger operative was squirming. "You were locked in a freezer for nearly five hours. When we got to you, you were severely hypothermic. Doc said your core body temperature was around 79.9º Fahrenheit. You were, ah, also showing signs of carbon-dioxide poisoning." He pressed his lips into a thin line, and Casey noticed that his hands were trembling. "You went into de-fib in the ambulance. We thought… we thought we lost you for a minute there. They said it was re-warming shock." Shaking his head, Rick looked down, apparently struggling to keep his composure.

"Well that explains why I feel like death warmed over," Casey replied, hoping to lighten the mood. But Rick's expression remained fraught. Awkward silence lingered for a few moments and Casey reached up to try to pull the stupid mask away from his face. Moving his arm sent pins and needles searing through the appendage, however, and when he looked at his hand – "Well that's unfortunate," he mumbled.

"Oh, I, er, I asked the doctor about that. He said it's actually better than it looks."

Rick's reassurances were a small comfort. Casey grimaced at the sight of the blisters that covered his reddening fingers.

"Apparently ice crystals formed between your cells when the tissue froze," the younger operative explained, brow furrowed in concentration as he not only recalled the doctor's words, but translated them for Casey's benefit. "He said the damage is mostly superficial. The blisters will break in a week, maybe two. There shouldn't be much lasting damage to the tissue. Though it'll be good to keep an eye on it. He said the bags wrapped around your hands and feet probably kept in enough heat to save you from needing any amputation. You actually haven't been out for too long; they said you're bouncing back faster than they'd expected–"

Casey had begun to tune Rick out. Bags. On his hands and feet. That had been Billy's idea. _Billy_... Casey blinked. "Where are Michael and Billy?"

Rick's face fell. "I… I'm not sure."

"What do you mean you're not sure?" Unease – he wouldn't admit to it being fear – sharpened Casey's voice.

"They… we split up when we got to the hospital. I stayed with you and Michael went with Billy. I haven't… I haven't seen either of them since then." Rick looked down at his hands and then grasped the arm-rests of the chair he sat in, gripping the edges with white knuckles. He wouldn't look at Casey, which told the older operative that he was hiding something. Rick had a terrible poker face.

Even with the warm water being pumped through him, Casey felt the pit of his stomach go cold… cold as it had been in the freezer, where his flesh had been numb and coated in frost…

"Martinez. What is operative Collins' condition?" The formality of the request, and the way he barked it seemed to get through to Rick, making him sit up ramrod straight, his mouth falling open as he mouthed something soundlessly before finding his voice.

"I – he– " He paused, then his shoulders slumped. "When we found you, Billy wasn't breathing. We couldn't find a pulse."

And with that, the bottom of Casey's stomach was gone. And horrible bits of memory began to creep insidiously back into his mind. Being trapped in the freezer. Wrapping themselves in the stupid plastic curtains. Huddling for warmth. Realizing they would run out of air. Shivering, violently. And the briefest, fuzziest memory of his rescue – of looking over and seeing Billy cold and motionless –

"He's dead then," he finally heard himself say, the words thick in his mouth.

Rick chewed his lip, "Er, I'm not sure… not necessarily."

Casey glared at him. "No breathing and no pulse, Martinez – you might want to review the medical definition of dead!"

"You didn't have a pulse for a while there, either," Rick snapped back. "There was something the paramedic, said, ok? Look, I'm not sure I translated it right, my Portuguese isn't as good as my Spanish and sometimes I mix up the words, but, well, he basically said that with hypothermia, 'you're not dead until you're warm and dead.'"

Casey gave him a level stare. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

Rick slumped back into his chair. "I don't know. But if Michael's still with him instead of being in here… I'm not giving up."

Silence fell, punctuated only by the bleeping of the heart monitor and the whirring of the machine hooked up to the tubes. Casey grimaced at the throbbing ache that pervaded his entire being, and reflected on what Rick had said. "You said my temperature was just shy of eighty degrees, right?"

"Yeah."

He bit his lip. "Billy was in there for the same length of time as I was, and I came out of it ok. He shouldn't have been any colder."

Rick coughed and looked down again, prompting Casey to narrow his eyes.

"_What_, Martinez?"

"Er, when we finally found you, Billy wasn't, um. He'd taken his jacket off. You were wrapped up in his blazer and all this heavy plastic sheeting. The doctor said it might be something called paradoxical-undressing–"

"No."

"Er, they say it's actually a pretty common phenomenon in hypothermia victims–"

"No. This was Billy. We both know damn well why he wasn't wearing a jacket." The vaguest, haziest memory, degraded by lack of air and a frozen, sluggish brain: a memory of someone wrapping something around him and offering an apology… Casey clenched his jaw until his teeth hurt.

They both looked down. "Yeah," Rick finally agreed, voice strained and small.

"I… I'm sorry," Rick murmured, after a few minutes had passed and Casey had sunk back into the hospital bed, exhausted.

"For what?" Casey asked, a bit more bitterness in his voice than he'd intended.

"We should have got there sooner. Michael and I – he was relying on me to be the smooth one since I spoke the language and–"

"Stop. Just stop. We're not going to play the 'whose-fault-is-it' game here, so knock it off right now. Hell, go make yourself useful and find Michael."

"But, he told me to stay here with you–"

"I'm _fine_. Or will be, at any rate. Now go and find Dorset and figure out–"

"Figure out what?" A new and yet familiar voice interjected, and Casey strained to turn his head toward the door.

Michael looked a bit haggard; his shirt was stained with sweat and his left side was covered in dried mud, but he appeared intact. There was a tiredness around his eyes, however, that Casey knew all too well.

Casey swallowed, feeling his throat tighten. "Michael."

"Good to see you back with us, Casey."

"Billy?" He had no intention of tolerating idle chit-chat. If Michael had left Billy that meant one of two things. Either Billy was pulling through, or… Or the other option that Casey did not want to think about, but already dreaded. Because in his mind, he could see the way Billy had looked with frost forming on his eyelashes and his skin waxy and blue.

Michael's expression was strained, but the forced smile that pulled at his lips gave Casey hope. "They say it's going to be touch and go, but… they think he may pull through."

Casey sank back, not even realizing until that moment that he'd been straining forward, holding his breath. "Thank God," he sighed, letting his eyes drift closed. He heard Rick whisper something in Spanish that sounded suspiciously like a prayer. Michael began to launch into some details about extracorporeal rewarming, but Casey was no longer listening. Relief and exhaustion both overwhelmed him, and he let his eyes drift shut.

* * *

><p>When Casey woke, he was surprised to find how little time had passed. His perception of time had slowed to a crawl during those hours in the freezer (five hours of that cold might as well have been five years) and he was still struggling with it. Minutes. Hours. Days. Whatever part of his brain was responsible for processing these terms apparently froze solid and had yet to thaw.<p>

Michael had taken up position in the chair that Rick had previously occupied. He offered a tired smiling by way of greeting. "Hey."

Casey tried to reply, stopped, coughed, and tried again. "Hey." His voice was more gravelly than usual. "I take it Martinez is with Billy?"

Michael nodded. "The doctors started asking a whole lot of questions, and I don't speak good enough Portuguese to answer them. There was an English-speaking nurse earlier, but apparently her shift ended about half an hour ago."

Casey grunted. "How is he?"

"He's pretty freaked out. Considering he was just about shot in the head by drug dealers and nearly lost two of his teammates, he's keeping it together reasonably well."

"I wasn't asking about Rick."

"I know."

There was a long pause.

"Well?"

Michael sighed. "Last I saw… the docs were taking aggressive measure to warm him up."

"Your descriptiveness is underwhelming. What do you mean, 'aggressive?'"

"Well, Casey, have you noticed how you have plumbing sticking out of your body?"

Casey inadvertently glanced down at the rubber tubing that was being used to irrigate his abdominal cavity. He'd pulled the sheets up partially to obscure them, finding the sight rather unnerving. As a rule, Casey generally did not care to have foreign objects sticking out of his body. "Yeah. Your point?"

"More aggressive than that."

"What? Did they stick an entire radiator inside him?"

"They have him hooked up to a heart-and-lung machine. They're pumping his blood out, warming it, and pumping back in. They're having to warm him slowly so he doesn't crash, but…" Michael shook his head, and Casey noted that the worry lines in his team leader's face were deepening. "The good news is that he probably won't have any brain damage. Something about metabolic rates in the cold, I wasn't really listening–"

"When that's the good news, Michael, I think we need to be concerned about where exactly we're setting the bar for 'good.'"

"Well, Malick, I don't know what else to tell you," Michael replied curtly. He hadn't quite snapped, but his tone had been abrupt.

Casey shut up. Michael usually humored his grumpy attitude and dour remarks, but from the look of things, Michael wasn't in the mood, and this was one of those rare instances where a little sensitivity was called for.

A nurse came in, checked on Casey's vitals, took his temperature, and smiled before departing.

The silence grew.

It was Michael who finally broke it: "You and I aren't so great at this optimism thing."

"I like to think of myself as a realist," Casey responded out of habit. It was a line he always resorted to when accused of pessimism. And Casey was frequently accused of pessimism.

Michael's voice was flat, almost hollow. "You know, when we finally tracked down one of Olivera's men and got him to tell us where you guys were… I didn't want to open the door. We got there, and Martinez went for the door handle, and I stood there half-wishing he wouldn't, because honestly, I thought we were too late."

The words 'you nearly were' sprang to mind, but Casey stifled them before he managed to speak them out loud: a rare act of tactful self-censorship.

"And even when he wrestled the door open and we saw you guys –" Michael continued, voice oddly strained, "–I thought, 'they can't be alive.' And Rick just ran right up and started checking your breathing. Hell, I thought both of you had to be dead. Neither of you were moving, you were white as sheets, you both had ice in your hair, and Billy was _rigid_."

Blurry half-memories of Billy looking like an icy corpse gnawed at the back of Casey's mind. "Well, you found us. That alone is reasonably impressive."

"I guess that's why we need them. Martinez and Collins." As Michael kept talking, Casey realized that his last comment had gone unheard. Michael was somewhere in his own head now, and the exhaustion was beginning to show. Casey found himself wondering just how long Fearless-Leader had been keeping vigil for him and Billy. "I mean, you and I, we're cynical. Bitter. We're jaded bastards. We need guys like them to keep us from getting crusty and just giving up. On all of this crap."

Casey frowned; Michael was starting to ramble, and his usual façade of calm, unruffled stoicism was cracking. Frankly, seeing him like this was getting a bit distressing. "Hey!" he interjected, trying to sit up with limited success. "We don't give up."

"I almost did."

"Yeah, well, you didn't. Now quit being depressing; I find it counter-productive to my recovery." Casey relaxed back on to the pillows with a grimace. Trying to sit up when there were tubes and whatnot sticking out of him had not been his most brilliant impulse. But seeing Michael so… _distraught_ had left him a bit rattled.

Michael snorted quietly. "I'm sorry. I think this mission is starting to get to me."

"Yeah, well. It'll be fine. You'll see."

There was a soft chuckle. "That sound dangerously like optimism coming from you, Malick."

"I told you: I'm a realist." Casey closed his eyes. Because the reality of it was that Billy would have to be fine, because that was the only reality Casey intended to accept.

* * *

><p>A few hours later, the doctors deemed Casey's temperature regular enough to remove the abdominal irrigation. One of the nurses had attempted to administer an anesthetic for the procedure, but Casey had protested. After the numbness he'd felt in that freezer, he'd take whatever sensation he could get, good or bad. And even though Casey spoke no Portuguese, he'd made himself understood in no uncertain terms; Casey was fairly good at getting his point across nonverbally. Especially in places where people left scalpels just <em>lying<em> around.

Rick had returned as he and Michael had swapped out once more. He'd conversed with the medical staff and then translated for Casey's benefit. He'd also relayed the news about Billy; that they'd taken him off the heart-and-lung machine, finally, and that his heart was beating on its own. He still hadn't regained consciousness, but having a pulse qualified as a significant improvement.

"I want to see him."

"Er, doctors said you shouldn't be moving. Your heart's in pretty fragile condition still–"

"I didn't ask what the doctors said about my heart, Martinez. I said that I wanted to see Billy."

Rick opened his mouth to protest further but then appeared to recognize the futility of doing so. "I'll go see if I can find a nurse I can talk into it. But I make no promises, ok?"

The young grasshopper did well, and less than an hour later, Casey was being wheeled down the hall toward Billy's room. The nurse into whose charge he'd been committed was a pretty thing – young and buxom and loquacious in the extreme. She rambled on in an endless stream of Portuguese as she pushed Casey's wheelchair through the halls. He hadn't the faintest idea what she was saying, but smiled rather bemusedly at her sheer enthusiasm for whatever it was.

The smile vanished when they entered Billy's room.

Casey had seen his fair share of wounded men. He'd seen the dying and the dead; he'd seen far more corpses than he'd care to think about, and many of them had been the result of his own handiwork. He'd also witnessed allies falling and friends suffering. Over the years, he'd formed a sort of shell to it all; it'd been the only way to keep from going a little crazy.

But sometimes, there were little things that slipped in through the cracks in the shell. A woman whimpering; a child sobbing; a dog whining. Things that wormed their way in and pierced his normally well-guarded heart.

Things like a teammate and friend lying motionless, hooked up to a dozen machines.

Casey swallowed. The nurse ceased her prattling with a small gasp, and then, clucking her tongue like a disappointed mother, moved forward to pull the blankets up a little higher over Billy's chest, partially obscuring the plethora of electrodes that monitored his vitals.

Billy was off the heart-and-lung machine, but they still had him hooked up to a respirator, pumping warm air into his lungs. Heating pads and blankets surrounded him, and under all the fabric and all the machinery, the Scot looked uncharacteristically small. For a second, Casey found himself looking at the lifeless, frozen body in the walk-in, blue and patterned in frost…

No. No, _that_ Billy wasn't breathing. _This_ Billy was, even if it was with the help of a machine. _This_ Billy had a beating heart, and while his skin was still pale and waxy, there were spots of pink on his cheeks and nose and ears. And _this_ Billy was going to damn well pull through.

The chatty nurse had decided to busy herself by fighting with the blinds over the window, offering Casey some semblance of privacy. He set his mouth in a grim line and rolled over to Billy's bedside.

"Hey," he grumbled, looking down at Billy.

Billy just laid there.

"You're a moron. Now quit being stupid and wake up."

Nothing.

Casey sighed. "I'll indulge you for now, Collins, but I won't put up with much more of this slacking, ok?"

For a second he hoped for a witty rejoinder or a clever comeback. He half expected Billy to open one eye, grin fiendishly, and make some stupid joke, revealing that he'd simply been faking unconsciousness all this time.

But there was just more silence, punctuated by the heart monitor's slow and sterile beep.

* * *

><p>Casey was back in his room, leafing through an outdated travel guide – the only English book Michael had been able to scrounge up – when Rick burst in with the news that Billy was awake.<p>

This time, they didn't even bother to find the nurse. Casey threw the blankets off and Michael ran to get the wheelchair, and within moments they were speeding down the hall, nearly knocking over an unsuspecting orderly in their rush to get to their teammate.

"He was a little confused at first, but he was pretty with it by the time I ran to go get you guys," Rick explained as they got to the door, holding it open for Michael to wheel Casey in.

Casey nodded, not really listening. Because as they walked in, Billy was propped up on pillows, smiling and flirting with the nurse and just generally being _Billy. _In that moment it seemed almost impossible to think of how close they'd come to losing that. How close Billy had come to being an engraved star on a wall.

"Afternoon, lads," Billy said, voice a bit hoarse. He grinned impishly and nodded at the nurse, who blushed before making her departure.

"Welcome back to the land of the living," Michael replied with the first genuine smile Casey had seen on his face since the mission began.

"Yes, well, I hear I have you to thank for that." Billy pulled the blankets up a bit more, a small shiver running through him. "I have to say, I don't reckon I'll ever be able to look at a popsicle the same way again. As a matter of fact, I –"

–And that was when Casey hauled off and hit him in the face.

Rick gasped and Michael shouted out Casey's name in surprise and Billy rocked back, blinking in stunned surprise even as Casey pulled his hand back, wincing at the pain from the blisters he'd managed to forget about. He'd stood up from the wheelchair abruptly and his legs still felt rubbery, but he managed to stay upright from sheer force of will.

"How _dare_ you!" Casey snarled from between clenched teeth, massaging his blistered hand even as it balled back into a fist. "You stupid, selfish son of a bitch!"

"Jesus Christ, Malick, what the hell?" Michael hollered, grabbing Casey by the back of his hospital gown and hauling him back into the chair. Anger and confusion and concern fought for control in Dorset's expression. Rick's face, by comparison, was a picture of pure shock; his mouth hung open and his eyes kept flitting from Casey to the door. Billy… Billy just lay there, a welt slowly forming on his cheek as he stared at the wall.

The muscles in Casey's jaw worked as he gritted his teeth together. Casey bottled up his feelings. Or he channeled them into rage. And sometimes, the two processes got combined, and all the fear and guilt and pain got pressure-cooked into simmering, concentrated fury, which, sooner or later, boiled over. Violently.

But Casey also went to great lengths to master self-control. And as fast as that anger had broken free, he was able to clamp it back down again, swallowing and closing his eyes as he took a breath before turning and looking Michael squarely in the eye. "I believe that Operative Collins and I need a few moments alone to have a discussion," he announced, his voice as even as he could force it to be.

Rick was still looking at him like he was a madman. "I don't think that's–"

"Shut up, Martinez," Michael interrupted. He gave Casey a long look, then glanced over at Billy.

Billy finally turned his head back, looked at Casey and Michael in turn, then nodded.

Casey saw Michael's stance relax, and instantly some of the tension went out of the room. "Come on, Martinez. Let's go raid the cafeteria."

Rick was still gaping in bewilderment, still trying to piece together what had just happened even as Michael bodily hauled him out of the room, closing the door and leaving Casey and Billy alone.

"Well. I'm glad that your ability to land a punch hasn't suffered from our little misadventure," Billy remarked, cautiously.

"You took your jacket off."

"Beg pardon?"

"In the walk-in. Rick said when they found us you'd taken your jacket off."

"Well, to be honest the whole experience has gone a little fuzzy in my mind. Can't say as I quite recall what my cold-addled mind drove me to do, as my wits were rather–"

"I call bullshit. You damn well remember. And it was stupid." Casey was fuming. His hands ached, even as he gripped the armrests of the wheelchair until his knuckles turned white. "I'm smaller than you; I have less surface area from which to lose body heat and shorter extremities. I'm also conditioned to have a higher tolerance for extreme environments. My odds of survival were always better, and after seven years of working together you_ knew_ that. So my question to you, is _what the hell were you thinking?"_

"You stopped shivering."

"I – what?"

Billy's blue eyes were inscrutable. "When you were shivering and I said something about it, you told me to start worrying when you stopped shivering. And then you stopped shivering."

Casey found himself unsure of how to respond. He floundered for a moment, chewing on his lip. "Still stupid," he finally mumbled. "I would have been fine."

"You don't know that." Billy had gotten that sad, faraway look on his face. It was the look Casey often spotted when Billy didn't think anyone was looking, or when he talked about Scotland: a sort of distant, quiet sorrow. For a moment, Casey wondered if they were about to descend into one of those long and semi-awkward silences, but then Billy spoke again: "Remember when I told you about walking out on Rannoch Moor?"

"You mean how you spent your youth hiking in the desolate highlands in the dead of winter? Yes, I remember." Casey still felt an inexplicable sense of bitterness, and it didn't help that he couldn't piece together where this conversational tangent was going. "You lived to go freeze to death another day. What about it?"

Billy stared out the window. The nurse from earlier – the chatty one – had removed the blinds, affording them a view of the sprawling city and a sky so blue, it looked like a badly photoshopped postcard. "I lived. But my mate – Malcolm, the one I'd gone hiking with – he'd taken a tumble earlier that day into one of the streams. Everything had been floodin' on account of the rains, see, and with all the mud, it was right slippery. They said it was the wet more 'n the cold what probably did him in. His heart just stopped in the middle of the night."

His gaze dropped from the window to the blanket across his lap. "I dinnae even know when it happened. I was fast asleep. One minute we were hunkering down in the hillside, and the next, a rescue team was shaking me awake an' giving Malcolm CPR…" he trailed off. "I suppose there's just so many people you can let down in your life, aye?"

Casey waited a moment, his expression an impassive mask. "So, you blame yourself for your buddy dying, and as a result, were willing to sacrifice yourself to keep history from repeating?"

Billy shrugged. "That's a mite more blunt than I'd have put it, but…"

"So what then? You just pass off your survivor's guilt like some sort of screwed-up torch?" Casey snapped, the mask crumbling. "Did you stop for a second to think that you'd just be handing all the guilt over to me?"

Billy was clearly taken aback. His mouth fell open, his blue eyes going wide. "I…"

"What was it you said about only being able to let so many people down in your life?"

"That's… that's not fair."

"Isn't it?" He seethed. His annoyance and, yes, maybe a little of fear, had combined to overwhelm any sympathy he might have felt. "You have a martyr complex. And it needs to stop. Your friend died, you lived – now get over it. Live with it. And keep living."

Casey let the words hang there. Billy's expression shifted subtly from surprise, to anger, to resignation.

"Guilt is a useless emotion," Casey ultimately added, a bit more gently.

Billy had a sullen look on his face. "Aye, well, next time we're both freezing to death, I'll be sure to keep any extra clothing to myself and leave you to your own devices."

"Good. You're learning." The corner of Casey's mouth twitched in a ghost of a smile.

For a moment Billy fixed Casey with a puzzled, conflicted look. He appeared to struggle with some silent inner decision – and then shook his head and chuckled. "You know, Malick, you're coming dangerously close to seeming like you care."

Casey snorted. "Of course I care, you nitwit. If you die, I have to waste all that energy breaking in yet another rookie."

The tension in the room had abated, and Casey felt himself relaxing a bit. The drawn expression on Billy's face had eased somewhat. Idly, Casey wondered if Michael and Rick were lingering outside the door, listening.

"I'm sorry," Billy finally said. "You're one of my closest mates, Malick. I dinnae want t' lose you… not like Malcolm or Simms." He grimaced, and Casey looked downward. "But I reckon you're right. I may have been a mite selfish."

They were reaching Casey's threshold for open, emotional conversation for the day. "Yeah, well, just don't do it again, ok?" he griped. "Ideally, neither of us will have to deal with survivor's guilt because we'll all just make it out fine. None of this stupid ambush business."

"I don't suppose we got the bloke what decided to put the two of us on ice, literally speaking?"

Casey shook his head. "Michael did a bit of digging. His name is Santos, and it looks like he's gone to ground. But Dorset and Martinez at least did us the favor of disrupting the bastard's supply route. With luck, Higgins will let us come back to take the son of a bitch out sometime soon." It would be a while before they got the appropriate intel to act, but Casey would be counting the days. And vengeance was going to be a dish best served very, _very_ cold.

Billy shrugged. "Well, I can only hope that our next visit to the lovely city of Rio affords a more fortunate sampling of the local climate. Possibly involving beaches and scantily-clad lasses," he added with a mischievous smirk.

And Casey smiled: because Billy was alive, and they were both going to fine, and soon enough they'd be out and on to the next mission.

"One can hope," he replied. "One can hope."

* * *

><p>It only took a couple days before the two of them were discharged. Casey's hands were wrapped in gauze on account of the blisters, to his profound annoyance, but the rest of his recovery proved speedy enough. Billy had a lingering cough, which concerned the doctors – Martinez translated something about the possibility of pulmonary edema – but in a rare stroke of luck the Scottish operative <em>didn't <em>take a turn for the worse, and the cough was deemed to be a simple chest cold.

Billy consented to letting the buxom, talkative nurse wheel him out. Casey had balked at the idea of any more damn wheelchairs and had insisted, to the hospital staff's obvious dismay, on walking out on his own two slightly frost-bitten feet. "I'm a perfectly able-bodied man," he grumbled, pulling on his shoes with a wince.

"As am I, but I'm hardly about to turn down a free ride from this lovely creature," Billy replied, offering a winning smile to the nurse, who'd giggled and responded with something in Portuguese.

"Well, be sure she rolls you directly to the entrance without any detours," Michael interjected. "Martinez went to get the rental car, and he's meeting us in five."

Once Billy'd woken up, Michael and Rick had gone and spent a night in an actual hotel; the chance to get a shower and some sleep had done them both a world of good. Michael's stoic bearing had returned, and a brief glance was all that he and Casey needed to agree that their conversation from the other day had never happened.

"I make no promises. I'm purely at the mercy of this dusky angel." Billy leaned his head back to wink at the nurse, prompting Casey to roll his eyes.

Five minutes later, the three of them were in the hospital lobby, having finished a few finals reams of discharge paperwork.

"You know," Billy said as they walked toward the sliding glass doors, "I've been thinking. And you know what we are, Casey?"

"I'm almost afraid to ask. Nothing you preface with 'I've been thinking' ever amounts to anything good."

Billy grinned impishly. "You and I, Casey, and the spies who came _out_ from the cold!"

Michael groaned, then chuckled. Casey just gave Billy a flat look. "Do you _want_ me to hit you again?"

"Oh come on, that was a good one!"

Michael shook his head, smiling. "Le Carré's got nothing on you, Collins."

Outside, Martinez pulled up with the rental SUV, and the three operatives stepped (or in Billy's case, rolled) out the doors into the blinding Brazilian sun. The air was hot on Casey's face, enveloping him with warmth that almost immediately set him to sweating. And for once, he didn't mind. Because warmth meant movement. Warmth meant life.

Warmth meant they'd come out from the cold and lived to tell the tale.

The corner of his mouth twitched wryly upwards. "Let's just go home."

**FIN.**


End file.
